Eugene Stovall

Genre

Fiction & Literature

Eugene Stovall

Eugene Stovall was born and raised in Oakland, California where he received a catholic education, graduating from Bishop O’Dowd High School. At the age of eighteen, he was invested into the Knights of Peter Claver. After leaving St. Joseph’s College Seminary where he studied for the Catholic priesthood, Stovall attended St. Mary’s College. After his first year of college, Stovall enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and was honorably discharged after four years of service.In 1966, Stovall graduated magna cum laude from the University of California. In 1969, using research
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from his studies at the University of Lund in Sweden, he obtained his masters degree from the University of California at Davis. As a National Foundation Fellow, in 1975, Stovall received his Ph.D in Political Theory from the Political Science Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Receiving advanced business training at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Dr. Stovall worked for Pacific Bell as a Marketing Manager as well as the Manager of Pacific Bell’s Business Training Center. He has also worked at the California State Legislature as well as the University of California’s Institute of Race & Community Relations. Dr. Stovall has been an adjunct faculty member at St. Mary’s College, San Francisco State University, University of San Francisco and Merritt College.

In 2006, Dr. Stovall hosted a Frank Yerby Symposium at the Oakland Museum, attracting celebrities and scholars from all over the country,The Hayward South County NAACP honored Stovall for memorializing the great black novelist. In March, 2013, Dr. Stovall was invited by the Augusta Literary Festival to participate in its first Frank Yerby Literary Prize presentation. Dr Stovall delvered an address at Paine College's Yerby House and introduced Gerald Yerby, Frank Yerby's nephew, at the Augusta Literary awards ceremony.

Eugene Stovall’s novels include the 2007 IPPY Bronze Medal winner, Frank Yerby: A Victim’s Guilt, Blood & Brotherhood: A Novel of Love in a Time of Hate, The Idumean Covenant: A Novel of the Fall of Jerusalem, Cassandra’s Curse: A Black Life In A Police State and Consort of the Female Pharaoh: Hatshepsut, Senenmut and Egypt's 18th Dynasty. Stovall has also authored two pin guides: Stovall’s Guide to Media Pins and Stovall’s Guide to Disney Pins of the Twentieth Century.

In ancient Egypt, the ruling religious and political forces rely on the separation of classes as the bulwark of their power. It’s heresy, for instance, to teach commoners that they may have any lot in life other than to serve the pharaoh. Senen-Mut is a commoner—a wealthy, promising young man, but a commoner nonetheless. Yet he catches the eye of the local leader and is chosen to study at the Royal School. There, he and young Princess Hat-Shep-Sut fall in love and begin a complex relationship that ties them together for the rest of their lives. Hat-Shep-Sut ascends to the pharaoh’s throne, vexing the conservative leaders, and Senen-Mut rises on to an illustrious military career. Meanwhile, Egypt is in a state of war, constantly defending and redefining its borders. Stovall draws deeply on historical sources to tell his story, set more than 3,000 years ago during Egypt’s 18th dynasty. (Hat-Shep-Sut and Senen-Mut are real historical figures, and historians have speculated on their romantic relationship). Unfortunately, storytelling itself often plays second fiddle to historical detail, turning what must have been very exciting lives into a rather tedious read. Characters sometimes act with very little motivation beyond historical necessity, and they fade in and out of the story, making it easy to forget the main story arc. Senen-Mut and Hat-Shep-Sut even disappear from the narrative for long stretches. This long, rangy book covers decades of action, but it’s oddly paced, often covering far too much ground in short, choppy paragraphs. Beyond the structure, there’s a desperate need for copy editing, with persistent punctuation, grammatical and spelling errors, as well as the odd but consistent italicization of certain proper names. A disciplined editor could help bring this epic story to life.

A big, baggy book that will appeal to only the most passionate ancient Egypt buffs.

ADDITIONAL WORKS AVAILABLE:

BLOOD AND BROTHERHOOD: A NOVEL OF LOVE IN A TIME OF HATE (Unpublished)

Historical Fiction

Set against the background of the Roaring Twenties when lawlessness, government wrongdoing and the Ku Klux Klan rule the land, Blood and Brotherhood dramatizes the epic struggle of the New Negro to win his freedom. It tells the story of military's obsession with the 200,000 Negroes returning from the Great European War. The military trained Negroes to kill whites in Europe and now believes these Negroes will to do it again in the United States. It also tells about the secret brotherhood of black men bound by their loyalty to each other and how in preventing the lynching of Negroes in the first world war, the brotherhood saves the son of it's founder in the second.
In Blood and Brotherhood, PETE JENKINS, a former veteran of the Great European War, joins Marcus Garvey's African Legion and rises to the rank of Security Commander. GRADY JONES, a soldier whose life PETE saves, is recruited by military intelligence to spy on Garvey's movement. GRADY also must learn the identity of the double agent leaking information to Negro militants. Military intelligence is especially alarmed that a double agent informs the African Blood Brotherhood of the KU KLUX KLAN's plan to destroy the Negro community in Tulsa. GRADY uses the green-eyed Jamaican beauty, JULIA DUNCAN, to seduce PETE. However, when JULIA and PETE fall in love, they must flee to Los Angeles to escape both Garvey's hit men and government agents. PETE and JULIA arrive in Los Angeles just in time for PETE to become involved in the KLAN's threat to apply the† Tulsa-solution to LA's Central Avenue neighborhood

Cassandra's Curse: A Black Life in a Police State," takes the reader back to Los Angeles at the time of the Vietnam conflict, before politically correct became society’s new norm.
Welcome to Kenny's world. Little Kenny Kiley watched his brother die at the hands of the LAPD during a candy heist. As a teenager living in the black slums of Los Angeles during the 1950s, Kenny is driven to join one of the toughest gangs in L.A. before shipping out for Vietnam. As an adult, Kenny struggles to overcome a lifetime of prejudice to make a life for himself and the woman who became his family.
Dr. Stovall tears the blinders off the haze of honor that surrounds most soldiers to expose the harsh reality of war and the conspiracies and political games that drove the action in Vietnam.
"Kenny finds that there is no honor or humanity in war; he commits many atrocities that haunt him upon his return to the U.S.," says Stovall. "He also discovers that the information given to the American public regarding what is really going on in Southeast Asia has no bearing on reality. He is not imagining a conspiracy theory. He is living it."
Returning the U.S., he slips back into a life of drugs and crime to support himself while he goes back to school and tries to commit himself to his new family-Hazel, a former prostitute on the streets of L.A., and the son and the daughter they made together. Hazel also returns to school, studying under a former CIA agent who isn't all that he seems and running into an old enemy whose death will eventually peel back the blinders on the crime, conspiracy and scandal that was life as a black man in a police state.
For more information on "Cassandra's Curse", visit www.EugeneStovall.com.
About the Book
Imagine living in a world where conspiracy isn't a theory. It's a fact. Where there are men waiting on every corner to tear you down because of the color of your skin. Where your friends aren't your friends, and sometimes your worst enemy is the only person you can count on.
Welcome to the life of Kenny Kiley. As a child, Kenny grew up in an exclusively African-American sector of Los Angeles. He watched his brother Allie and Allie's best friend Bert torn apart because of the color of their skin, and that same brother killed by white cops during a candy heist.
Kenny eventually went on to embrace a life of crime to keep food on the table. As a member of the Slausons, he's taken care of. Eventually, he becomes a pimp and a drug dealer in his own right, a new career path leads him directly to the LAPD-and to Bert.
It's been years since the days Bert and Allie ran wild in Bert's backyard. Bert's a cop now, looking for intel for the FBI, and he needs Kenny's help to gather information about the radical African-American community. Kenny helps him, but in the process he becomes a liability. Bert saves his life, sending him to Vietnam rather than become the victim of a hit man's bullet and leaving Hazel, the woman he loves, behind.
After surviving the atrocities of war and seeing firsthand the political cover-ups that plagued life in Vietnam, Kenny returns home a changed man. He's determined to provide for Hazel and their baby daughter. Life isn't easy when you're a black man in the '50s, however, and Kenny soon finds himself dealing drugs again to feed his family (which now includes a little boy) while he goes back to school.
Hazel also returns to school, only to find herself in the middle of a conspiracy that caused the deaths of hundreds at the Watts riot. She confronts her instructor, a former CIA agent himself, who promptly bans her from academia and sends her directly into Bert's arms and the sweet embrace of crack cocaine.
Will Kenny and Hazel survive her addiction? Will they emerge from the poverty that threatens to drag them under and the conspiracy that threatens their lives? What happens to Bert? Find out in "Cassandra's Curse".

The novel, Frank Yerby: A Victim’s Guilt, transports the reader into a mysterious and fascinating world were history and fiction merge within the actuality of Frank Yerby’s mind. Characters from Frank Yerby’s own books snatch him from his deathbed and demand that he recant his doctrine of the ‘victims guilt’. They believe this doctrine has condemned Yerby as well as his characters to oblivion. Their will to survive is pitted against Yerby’s pernicious belief in the ‘victim’s guilt’ with unforeseen consequences for all.
As Yerby’s mind rages against his unkind fate …
Yerby’s characters rage against him.Who of us is not a victim…And does not serve their masters…Willingly?
When the sorcerer resorts to magic to explain a mystery,
He crosses from the realm of illusion…Into the world of reality.
FRANK YERBY is on his deathbed … and he knows it. But death frightens Yerby not at all. Death infuriates him. Death means that none of his literary accomplishments will be appreciated. And he will be denied the acclaim that he deserves. But even as Yerby’s mind rages against this unkind fate, characters from his books … his own creations … rage against him. They accuse him of being the author of his own failure and, in turn, casting them into oblivion. So Yerby's characters determine that he must unravel the mystery of the 'victim's guilt'. In part one, SUMAYLA summons Frank Yerby back to 9th century Spain using the powers of Jewish mysticism. Sumayla is allied with the grand vizier who plots to overthrow the Emir of Cordoba. In the second part, the leader of a Voodoo cult conjures up a spell to bring Frank Yerby to Cuba. The Voodoo priest wants Yerby to assist and protect his nephew, PEDRO, who plans to lead an insurrection of Negro slaves and Cuban haciendados against Cuba’s rulers.In the third part, ELLEN causes the rape and murder of her sister and must flee only to become embroiled in the bloody Kansas border war. When she is sold into slavery, Frank Yerby must come to her rescue.?

THE IDUMEAN COVENANT: : A NOVEL OF THE FALL OF JERUSALEM (Unpublished)

Historical Fiction

PROLOGUE:
A leather pouch filled with scrolls is passed to a courier for Rome’s Christian community. The community’s bishop instructs the courier to deliver the scrolls to an Idumean in Alexandria. However, two wealthy Judeans bribe the courier to turn the scrolls over to them in return for a large pouch of gold.
BOOK ONE:
ROBBAN, a household slave of the House of Mattathias, runs away accompanied by his good friend, LUPO, also a slave of the House of Mattathias. Unlike ROBBAN, LUPO does not live in the house, but in the fields where he shepherds sheep and goats. ROBBAN runs away because he is in love with AILIJAH, a slave girl. AILIJAH believes that the scion of the house, JOSEPHUS BEN MATTATHIAS, will marry her, if she allows him to have her.
ROBBAN and LUPO join the sicarii, the Judean army being raised and trained by Jewish nationalists who are planning to forcibly eject the Romans out of Israel. All out war begins when the Romans demand that Jewish bandits raiding caravans on the Great Silk Trade route be turned over for punishment. When the Jews refuse, a Roman legion from Syria attacks Jerusalem. Even though the Romans crush Jewish opposition, taking Jerusalem’s entire lower city, NERO calls off the attack. When the Roman legion attempts to withdraw, the Jews annihilate it. Less than a quarter of the legionnaires who invade Palestine, survive. ROBBAN and LUPO lead sicarii units against the Romans. In Jerusalem, a nationalist government of zealots takes over the Temple and ousts the aristocratic ruling party. The high priest is pitched from the Temple Mount to his death.
Jerusalem’s nationalist government appoints JOSEPHUS governor of Galilee. JOSEPHUS raises an army of 100, 000 men and directs them to attack the Idumean king’s palace in Tiberias. ROBBAN and LUPO participate in the attack. NERO appoints VESPASIAN and his son, TITUS, to subdue the Jewish insurrection. VESPASIAN invades Galilee catching JOSEPHUS, AILIJAH, his mistress, as well as ROBBAN and LUPO in the walled fortress of Jotopata. JOSEPHUS surrenders to VESPASIAN while AILIJAH is captured and ROBBAN and LUPO escape.
BOOK TWO
ROBBAN and LUPO return to Masada where they are recruited by SIMON BAR GORIAS, a sicarii and a bandit, to train his army of 20,000 Jews. SIMON’S army attacks Idumean towns and villages, slaughtering the inhabitants and looting their possessions. SIMON considers himself a devote Jew, holding to SHAMMAI’S teachings that the Law not only permits Judeans to steal from Idumeans, it permits Judeans to murder them as well.
As they prepare to lead SIMON’S army against Hebron, ROBBAN and LUPO meet up with AILIJAH. She has been freed from captivity only to become VESPASIAN’S mistress. AILIJAH has been sent to find ROBBAN and LUPO because VESPASIAN wants SIMON to invade Jerualem. But SIMON refuses. JOSEPHUS instructs AILIJAH to remain with ROBBAN until they convince SIMON to invade.
Meanwhile, JOSEPHUS arranges for his mentor YOCHANAN BEN ZAKKI to meet with VESPASIAN. The rabbi and Roman agree to a covenant that establishes a Sanhedrin for the conduct of Jewish affairs at the seacoast village of Jabne in return for a formal surrender of the Jewish government to Rome. This covenant is to go into effect after the destruction of Jerusalem.
JOSEPHUS has the ‘Idumean’ Legion, a body of legionnaires disguised as Idumeans, to kidnap SIMON’S wives. ROBBAN and LUPO tell SIMON about the kidnapping and blames the zealots. SIMON invades Jerusalem.
BOOK THREE
Jerusalem is in civil turmoil. The zealots control the Temple; bandits from all over Judea control the lower city. But when Simon invades Jerusalem, the violence escalates into all-out war. Caught between SIMON’S sicarii and ELEAZAR’S zealots, the bandits wrest control of the Temple on a Sabbath. In the midst of the war, ROBBAN and LUPO must rescue of SIMON’S wives, one of whom is pregnant.
Unable to escape Jerusalem, the woman and child as well as ROBBAN and LUPO are rescued by the Desposyni. The This group are a community in Jerusalem composed of the family and friends of the messiah known as the Christ. The Temple Guard, also known as Templars, protect the Desposyni. The Desposyni live in the villa of the JOSEPH AB AREMATHEA, the Sadduceean aristocrat, who held a seat in the Sanhedrin and owns a fleet of ships. Under the direction of SIMON PETER, also known as SIMON ZELOTES and SIMON MAGUS, the Desposyni plan to use Temple treasure to buy off the Roman centurion in charge of the ‘Idumean’ Legion. The plan is successful and the Desposyni escape. However, during the escape, LUPO is captured and crucified.
BOOK FOUR
Over twenty years later … JOSEPHUS has ascended to the pinnacle of power. JOSEPHUS has served the EMPEROR VESPASIAN and his son, the EMPEROR TITUS and now he serves as Imperial Counselor to the EMPEROR DOMITIAN, VESPASIAN’S youngest son. However, the Imperial Scribe, EPAPHRODITUS, a wily political veteran, intends to remove JOSEPHUS from Rome, permanently. The Imperial Scribe uses the EMPRESS DOMITIA LONGINA to place JOSEPHUS at the mercy of those who fought in the Jewish insurrection and who consider JOSEPHUS, a traitor. Now the seek a way can avenge themselves upon the Jewish rabbi. The leader of the plot to kill JOSEPHUS is LUPO who survives his crucifixion and becomes a hero of the Templars. JOSEPHUS who owns a villa, vineyards and farmlands in Judea, makes AILIJAH his steward and ROBBAN in charge of his vineyards. Through his relationship with ROBBAN and AILIJAH, LUPO, although blind, prospers as a wine merchant.
In order to foil EPAPHRODITUS’ plot, JOSEPHUS sends AILIJAH and ROBBAN to intercept the scrolls that prove JOSEPHUS betrayed the insurrection. Once revealed, these scrolls will put JOSEPHUS outside the protection of Jewish Law and fair game for his enemies. JOSEPHUS uses the EMPRESS DOMITIA LONGINA to foil the Imperial Scribe’s plot. However, in doing so his own plans to put a convert to the Stoic/ Judaic cult on DOMITIAN’S throne are jeopardized.

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